A Bad End
by Cakes Blargh
Summary: She woke up in Blackwatch's facility. They started hearing a woman's voice in their head.
1. Prologue

**Prologue**

* * *

 _"We've got orders from Maryland. ZEUS has been spotted multiple times in this area, one of the reports has something interesting to say."_

 _"He's carrying a girl in his arms."_

 _"Within the span of time he retrieved her from the Central Core Hive. Considering our… sudden cut of communication from our regular watch, we assume our small-time doctor has decided to play side. Your task is to retrieve Dr. Bradley Ragland and Dana A. Mercer from St. Paul's Hospital. Secure any work of the doctor's as well. Understand, soldier?"_

 _"What about ZEUS, captain?"_

 _"As far as I know, nothing can survive a nuke."_

The deafening roar of the helicopter's rotors droned as four Blackhawks soared over the water of East River. Upper East Side Manhattan wasn't the glimmers of glasses of high rise buildings, but it was nonetheless marred by the hellscape of trailing smokes of fires from further south and in the west. It was strange to see the rubbles of warzone amidst the townhouses that stood side by side – all the more made it easier for the infection to grow from one building to another.

Thousands of lives were housed within those walls throughout the decades. Now a whole street was gone, reduced to nothing but ruins in the purging.

It was a despairing scene they could see in every part of Manhattan. What was there to save if this was the remains?

"NYC looks fucked," a man radioed at the sight before them. "They say Hudson's river filled with barges of just skinheads."

"Shit's still on fire too," commented a veteran, voice scratching into their headset.

"Thank fucking God we're on retrieval," said another.

"You guys spoke too soon."

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph…"

They hovered by the harbor, overlooking the remains of a white aged square building. At the very center, a square tall tower sat right on top, standing out like a sore thumb. Attached to the side, a small semi-modern addition was placed as part of its grand entrance… or should be. A whole chunk of the south side of the building was missing, smashed through right under by something big enough to make a section of the building collapse into the ground. The streets surrounding the hole was crawling with Walkers, and already red meat moss was growing from the corpses of New York's citizens.

Hell had decided to open its mouth.

"Red Crown, Red Crown. This is Thunder Two-Fifteen. We've got a situation here. Infected have breached St Paul's Hospital. I repeat, infected have breached St Paul's Hospital. They have dug… a giant hole right at the location. Standing by for order. Over."

"I thought they're headless…"

"Secure the area," the clipped voice of Red Crown ordered shortly. "Commence Operation Ark."

"That was quick."

"We're going in there? Like in there? In that hellhole? Hellhole filled with skinheads and fuck-knows-what."

"You heard Red Crown, Commence Operation Ark. Thunder Two-Fifteen, clear the area for landing."

"Copy that, Lieutenant."

The screams were instantly heard the moment the red smokes of BloodTox spilled from the canisters deployed, the slow pace of Walkers turned into a frenzied fury. It spoke of their lack of minds when they didn't run away, but towards the BloodTox tanks instead. Their mountain of bodies trying to extinguish the red viricides from seeping into the streets. Something was commanding them. Something was still there.

Nothing says calm before the storm like the thunderous fury of 30mm bullets puncturing the flesh of infected coming out of the woodwork with an orchestra of M4 and M16 rifles firing. As cheerful as the tune was, it didn't stop the pessimistic thoughts lurking in the back of their minds. If Dana Mercer and Dr. Bradley Ragland were not amongst the casualty, that meant one thing. They would have to venture down into that hole beyond the reach of convenient air support and easy cavalry – no thanks to the cowardice of Col. Taggart and Zeus leaving Blackwatch's command a goddamn mess.

With the state of the building, a missing morgue, and a giant hole in place of it, that situation was becoming more likely.

"Hydras at three o'clock."

The Blackhawk tilted and swerved as a piece of 740 pounds of pure asphalt was thrown straight through hundreds of feet of air towards the space they've occupied. With a few paces, it would have hit them and sent them spiraling down into New York's cold water. In retaliation, Thunder Two-Fifteen sent two rockets down accompanied by two Blackhawks raining metals onto the streets of Manhattan, the deep booms thundering even through their gears.

The bloodcurdling roar of a Leader Hunter came expectantly, and in reply, the sound of a pack followed.

No commands needed to be made, all four Blackhawks simultaneous changed their priorities. They retreated further away from the harbor, beyond the reaches of the perches on buildings with the cold river water below as their moat.

It didn't discourage the one Hunter when it jumped, leaping towards them from a building, only to fall few feet off its mark and down into the water. It actually wriggled in panic, water splashing and surged into a wave at its pathetic flapping, a clear obvious runt of the family.

The veteran laughed, "Look at it go."

"Seen my cat do better."

The Blackhawks paid no mind to the spectacles, instead they focus-fired on the leaping creature that was clearly aggravated by the preys being beyond its reach.

A Hunter threw a car, only for the makeshift missile stopped short by the cheerful whistle of a rocket blasting it off its course. Another one followed its siblings, throwing a grey truck right after and a Blackhawk was quick to stop it. It was like watching a pack of apes at a zoo throwing sticks only to have the sticks uselessly bounced back against the glass wall that separated animals from humans. The persistence though was what made them dangerous, as they kept throwing something, Blackwatch had to quickly change its focus from Hunter to hazards.

A pattern the Leader Hunter took advantage when all the Hunters focused-fire. The sound of Thunder Two-Twenty exploded when an asphalt smashed into the cockpit followed by another two flying hazards sending the helicopter careening down with screaming men tumbling down into the water.

Thunder Two-Fifteen and Two-Eleven rained fire and metal at the brief opening with Two-Twelve making short work of the stunned Leader with a blast of a Thermobaric missile.

"Dumb thing in the end."

"But it's smart and learning, trying to mimic what we just did."

"Well… it's a smoldering corpse now."

The street sweeping season continued until nothing more remains but piles of punctured corpses waiting to be burn. In the stifling peace, two Blackhawks landed in the empty streets. The men of Blackwatch spilled out from the Blackhawks and onto the ground – soldiers in black nuclear-biohazard-chemical gear, wearing a dark blue full body skin-suit beneath the standard military webbing, their black tactical helmet equipped with vision goggles and gas mask. They spread out across the field, rifles raised and ready to shoot on any remains of Infected.

Their executive officer glanced with distaste at the living fluid crawling out from the corpses. Even when brains were blown to mush, and its hosts dead, the infections always find a way to persist.

"Burchfield!" he called out.

A D-Code snapped and turned. "Sir!"

One of the many super soldiers from Project D-Code, he was a tall hulking giant of muscles that put bodybuilders to shame, easily stood out a head higher than the other men. An experiment made possible from a dose of the mother virus and the surgery they undergo that implanted the metal spinal supports all could see protruding on his back. His body suit was grey instead of the typical navy blue, and he wore a rectangular box, a black camera device of a sort pressed up against the top part of his gas mask. It was a built-in mobile viral detector meant to spot out the skin-shifter amongst the men of Blackwatch.

"Lead your team to the hospital. There's probably some fresh-brewed Walkers in there," he ordered the giant.

"With pleasure," the hulking soldier grunted and stomped off.

"And get me some Sandhogs here," he ordered the rest of his men.

His gaze turned towards the hole gaping before them. It was at most within the span of a hundred feet diameter, narrowing down into a crack that sharply descent. It widened further, encompassing into a chasm that swallowed the morgue down under. Uncanny in design, like it was purposely made to make it easier for… Walkers to climb out.

From the infrared sensor of his vision goggles, he could see dim glows stirring within the abyss. Heat, which meant more living things.

He pulled out his radio. "Red Crown, this is First Lieutenant Thompson here. I'm going to need a team of HUSAR to clear up some rubbles here ASAP. Over."

"Copy that," she said. "A team would be on the way within an hour."

He looked up from the hole then at the remains of the platoon. One Blackhawk was gone, one gunner, one pilot down, eleven men waiting for confirmation. Thunder Two-Fifteen could be heard hovering near, searchlight on and scanning for survivors from the crash in the water.

"Secure the area, rendezvous at fifteen, and prepare for descent," he ordered the rest.

"…fuuuuuuck."

"Stow it, soldier!" Their sergeant barked.

* * *

It was under the subtle glaring gaze of aggravated Sandhogs that had been herded into some pen during the Outbreak, miraculously given back tools of trade despite the massive lack of infrastructure Manhattan needed to coordinate resources, that two squads of Blackwatch prepared in front of the descent.

Red smokes of BloodTox rose from down below, covering the backs of a team of Marines' Heavy Urban Search and Rescue looking through the wreckage. Sounds of loud construction and clanging of equipment securing rubbles in place echoed loudly. The blinding construction lights were set up in front of the entrance. They shone down the hole, revealing more rubbles and broken leaking pipes sticking out of the ground. Some of the men hoped they weren't going to deal with New York's sewage system, because dealing a hive on top of whatever shit waiting for them down there was what they just needed.

"Lieutenant!" A voice called down below. "We've located a body. It's the doctor."

"Dead?" He radioed the team.

"Nah. He's one lucky sonofabitch. Trapped beneath the rubbles," the radio reported. "He's still conscious… barely."

"The Infected didn't bother digging him up?"

"Looks like it. Wait, he's got something to say."

He raised an eyebrow from beneath his gear. "What is he saying?"

"Talking about some anti-viral drugs. Slows down the infection. She needs it."

She? Dana Mercer?

"He's not making much sense. I think he's delirious."

He made a disgruntled sound before he said, "I'll be sending the extraction team down there." He turned around, gaze resting on the squad standing around the D-Code. "Once the HUSAR given all clear, extract Dr. Bradley Ragland," he ordered.

"Burchfield, you're in command. If we don't hear us back by…" He pulled out his radio then glanced at the afternoon sky that had the gall of Fall's sun shining brightly through the grey clouds. "Twenty-four hours from now on, blow the tunnel into smithereens."

"Copy that, sir," the D-Code drawled. "You're taking the experimental weapon?"

"Got to test the peashooter out," he said with a grimace.

"And I'm stuck with them," muttered a soured Blackwatch with said peashooter equipped across his chest instead of the standard issue M16 rifle.

It was an inauspicious black tranq rifle with ammo capacity attached to it. A glorified non-lethal air gun made lethal in the field of monsters capable of soaking bullets. Tranq shouldn't even work on infected considering human beings themselves had varied results when it comes to drugs in their system. Some took more, some took less to affect, and that same amount could easily kill the next person. With the resilience of the infected stack on top, he doubted the tranquilizer was a reliable weapon to dish out the damages they needed.

This was the next best thing their weapon's department came up with? Apparently, the darts within were filled with some strong bio-chem, strong enough that they were told to handle them with care. If it broke from its casing, it will kill the person within a second of contact.

It clearly wasn't BloodTox they were handling. BloodTox starts to have an effect if it was saturated at an environmental level, not within 100ml of liquid.

"Ready men!" He barked at the restless soldiers geared up with light and heavy weaponry at his side.

"Sir!"

The click of climbing gears and kicks at some loose debris at the edge, they started to rappel down the hole. One of them made one last sign of the cross before he followed his team down. The glaring lights above slowly became distant, the sharp slant rectifying into a solid foothold they could stand on. Amidst the red vapors of BloodTox, their platoon leader waited in front of the HUSAR's team leader. In comparison to the typical tri or double lens of Blackwatch's NBC gear, the Marine wore a gas mask with a clear visor.

"This was what the doctor was asking to give you. Says it's urgent for you to administer it," he said, passing what looked like two cases of insulin shots into the Lieutenant's hand. "Right now, my team is trying to secure the wreckage around him before we bring him out." He gestured at the cleft of rubbles.

"How did he manage to survive all of this?"

"We found him in what's left of the hospital's cold chamber. Probably caught off guard while he was in there. We'll continue the search-"

"Let me remind you that you are standing on a quarantine area that was overrun by the infected. If you found any survivors, let my men handle them," he said briskly. "Do you understand, Marine?"

"Yes… sir."

He turned away from him, joining the rest of his troop waiting ahead.

Without another word, the troop began moving. They entered the stifling darkness, climbing even further down beyond the grasp of the red vapor of BloodTox and the glaring lights. Asphalt, concretes and debris slowly gave away to the hard rocks hundreds of feet below Manhattan. The sounds of construction became echoes that thumped in the distant.

The blue lens of their helmet gleamed in the dark, night vision and lights turned on to light their way ahead. The air slowly grew thicker and warmer, the skin beneath body suits began sweating uncomfortably in their march, the stench of rotten meat growing stronger even through the mask.

The ground and walls were soon met with familiar pulsating veins rooted in the rocks.

"You think it's a good idea to bring the big guns down here, sir?" A Blackwatch spoke. "You know… close quarters, explosions, unstable underground…" He gestured the anti-tank missile launcher on his shoulder.

"Must you?" Another spoke out with an annoyed voice.

"If you have any other idea that could do the same job effectively against the stronger Infected, do so and tell me, soldier," their lieutenant called out drily. "Besides, I don't think you have to worry about narrow space down here." He looked around at the cavernous arch around them, hundreds of feet wide and tall, carved meticulously but jagged as if chewed through by something with sharp teeth and spat out of the other end.

"I have a feeling this tunnel had handled something worse in them," he told his troop.

"You think it's that big thing that attacked Time Square, sir?"

MOTHER has been said to be tunneling an underground hive, giving the Infected unrestricted movement and growth with no means for air support and artillery to stop them. It was a method they assumed the Infected were using to get out of the island, digging through the Red Line right beneath their nose and under the rivers. The plan to use BloodTox pumps at Time Square was to stop this from happening.

To be honest, he wasn't sure how extensive these tunnels system was and how far MOTHER had managed.

They were literally in the blind.

"That's the worst outcome," he told them.

They were silent. It didn't need to be spelled out, meeting one of the worst Infected variants hundreds of feet underground without the help of proper fire support and in close quarters says everything about their prospect down here.

Black heavy boots continued to march, thick soles stepping on a layer of a web made of soft flesh that throbbed and pulsated in a slow breathing pattern. Nothing was said, only the subtle breathing behind masks was their company down here. Their nerve tightening when they encountered nothing after what seemed an hour meandering down here.

The ground subtly shook, and the troop paused.

Hands slightly shifted their position and weapons were hefted up in ready. The shaking grew stronger, not just under them but all around, a tremor they could feel in their bone.

"Move NOW!" their lieutenant barked.

Rocks around them crumbled and burst. Something long and pointy slammed out of the walls, pinning down two of the men suddenly. Their screaming cut short when they were punctured and slid through by the long slender beak that gave away to a slithering flesh.

Worm-like. Split jaws. Up close, he had forgotten how huge a Hydra was – long enough to count as a building, wide enough to crush a car underneath them. They were so unassuming from high above but deadly in their unpredictably to appear anywhere underneath. Down here, it was everywhere.

The ceiling and floor shook, more came out all around them above and below, front and back, from all sides. The tunnel suddenly growing teeth of them.

"Deploy the canisters of BloodTox!"

The clang of metal cans and hiss of viricides vapor being released, someone launched a missile. One Hydra dismembered from its beaks in the deafening explosion, the bones and jaws shattering into bits. It quickly retracted back into the hole from where it came, but more kept coming in its place. They surged out of the ground between his soldiers, separating his men from others as pillars of flesh that were enclosing them in.

The tunnel shutting its jaws down onto them.

Then someone shot the peashooter dart multiple times amidst the useless gun firing.

The moment the dart met the flesh, the moment the Hydra eerily screamed. Its flesh seemed to grow a large pimple instantly from where the dart was before the parasitic growth burst and melted into fluids, bleeding the Hydra continuously than it could heal as something within ate its inside up and spit it out. Its flesh oozed and slid away from its bones as it violently thrashed, crushing more of his men in its wild swiping. Someone shot three more into it, the agonizingly slow and deadly effects sped up and grew stronger, paralyzing it when it feebly twitched in mid-motion.

It was being bled dry. It was melting. The hot blood and fluid seeped up to their ankles when it slammed down to the ground. All done within minutes but still too slow to his liking when he remembered the men it crushed before its inevitable end.

"Shoot it, shoot everything with it, fucking shoot it!" someone shouted.

That someone did as three more Hydra had followed suit by some darts hitting their flesh, the ground shaking when they roared shortly just before their large tendril body collapsed, hot thick fluid splattering onto some of the men when they crashed. The result was instant.

They ran away, retracting and retreating into the ground. Something scared them so much, hurt them so much, they rather ran away, and it was inside those darts.

Everyone stood in silence, the thick air still hissed of BloodTox vapors escaping from their canisters punctuated by the sound of someone hyperventilating loudly from the ground. That someone was the one holding the peashooter up. Everyone looked at him expectedly, and he clutched the tranq rifle possessively to his chest in answer.

"Sir, why didn't we have something like this earlier on?"

"It's a recent development they've just discovered," he spilled this out. "There wasn't any need to weaponize it before until… now."

There was no Hydra, no Hunter, heck… no fucking ZEUS in all the previous outbreaks Blackwatch has dealt with. No previous outbreaks were a catastrophe, unlike Manhattan. Bullets and the firepower they had were enough to shut down all previous ones for the last forty years and were also less dangerous to handle unlike whatever in that lethal air-gun.

"Samples," their lieutenant suddenly said. "Gather samples. That's one of the conditions of using that," he ordered his men.

"What the hell is in that gun?"

"I'm not supposed to know so you should shut up too. Go and help your squad mate instead," he snapped and looked around at some of the soldiers pulling up one of them off the ground.

They were a shaking mess, he inhaled sharply then he looked down and stared at his own gloved hands smeared by something then at his boots in the thick puddle of infected fluid. He could feel the uncomfortable heat of the Hydra's blood on him.

He crouched and dipped his gloved hand into the puddle before he brought it back out. It didn't feel alive but looks could be deceiving. When human and animal bleeds, it was just tissue, but Infected fluid was alive, every little part of it an individual thing with the instinctual sense to spread, grow and protect its own life. A troublesome trait that resulted to meat moss, crawling tendrils, and hives built from the remains of Infected bodies. ZEUS was said to slurp these fluids with his feet if it wasn't sucking the Infected dry with its consuming.

Hence the burning of corpses, cut off the infection's food supplies.

He stood up and sauntered over towards a cannister on the ground, his hand hovered over the BloodTox vapors hissing from it. Through the green night vision of his lens, he saw the fluid just dribbled and dripped down his hand like liquid, not defying the rules of gravity. Dead matter. The lab was going to need to examine this.

The fact the tunnel wasn't reduced to holes of Swiss cheese from the Hydras' digging said something about the structure itself. A carpet of meat had sealed up those worms' entrances. The ground a landmine of craters and holes already covered with throbbing roots crawling over it. They weren't standing on a pile of dirt and rocks, they were standing on a web.

They knew where they were down here.

This flesh could feel them with each step, could count how many preys had entered their domain and like a spider's web, the sensation would travel up and be felt by the heart of this giant fucking hive – while his men down here wander in the blind.

"Anyone of you who can stand, stand now!" he said and gave them a minute before he asked, "How many of us left?"

A quick glance at those capable, his Corporal said, "Twelve."

He came here with twenty-one men, and instantly nine of them were down.

"The injured?" His voice hardened.

"Will be dealt with, sir."

"If you can't do it," he said loudly. "Bring me to them. Salvage their gear before you do."

"Sir." The grunt nodded.

He heard three shots fired. One in the head, two in the chest. It wasn't unheard for someone to survive a shot in the skull. The shots in both lungs were to ensure they don't. If they really want to be sure, they would check to see if the eyes dilate.

Another three shots were fired.

"Sir, should we retreat?"

It would be the smart thing to do. They didn't have the resource nor the firepower to deal with whatever was down here.

"We still have the demolition equipment with us?" he asked and turned towards them.

"Yeah."

"We'll go a bit deeper, set up the explosions, just to give them something for the hell they caused," he said to his group of soldiers. "The rest of you who wants to retreat, retreat. You have my permission."

Their blue lens gleamed in the darkness. None of them moved, they stood as one, as Blackwatch.

"Fuck that," someone said. "When we hunt. We kill. I didn't come here to run."

He smirked. "No turning back now."

Onward they went, deeper into the heart of these tunnels, passing the oozing corpses of the Hydra on the ground. The sounds of their heavy boots marching muffled by the layer of flesh squelching from each step they made. From the distant, they could see shambling silhouettes of human beings. Walkers. They gurgled and croaked like their lungs were thick with some fluids in their shuffling to some direction ahead. In an instant, one of them screeched with all suddenly turning around, rushing towards them.

"Save those darts for the bigger ones!" He quickly commanded. "The rest of you, open fire!"

They tore into the numbers of Infected easily, thinning out the crowds with the occasional grenade launcher fired to stop them overwhelming.

A furious roar of a Hunter echoed and shook the ground they stood on. Even out of its element, in a tightly enclosed space, it was quick to leap from spot to spot, clinging to walls and ceiling with its claws to avoid the missile shot at it, and it was heading straight towards them.

A dart stabbed into its shoulder, it squealed, collapsing onto the floor and stumbling in confusion at its sudden useless limb attached to it. A missile made short work of its head, the impact of the explosion shattering the bones of its skull with the burst of fire swallowing the rest of its body.

They continued their march, clearing out the tunnel of occasional Walkers, the thundering of guns echoing throughout the tunnel until they were back to walking in silence again.

An eerie moment of respite that made them stood more on edge.

"Feels like we're being watched," one of them said.

Then they found it, an intersection. From the large pimples and bulbous growths on the walls and ground, that squirmed and twitched of something growing inside, to the thick unbearable heat and stench of rotten meat, the air roiling alive as the tunnel breathed. They stood on the inside of a hive with the tunnels splitting off to different directions.

In the center of it all, a pale white body laid curled up on the pulsating ground of flesh, as if put there carelessly.

"Scout the area, and set up the explosions," their lieutenant ordered before he marched over with three others accompanying him.

She wore a long hospital gown that covered up to her knees, the sleeve short and ended up just above her elbows. She laid out on her front, her arm sprawled out and resting by the side of her head, her short-cropped hair matted and clump, a droplet of sweat slid down from her head. She was peacefully asleep despite the side her face pressed against a pulsating source of infection, her mouth just a breath away from the throbbing rotten meat.

Twenty-year-old college girl out of place amongst the wrongness that surrounds her.

None of them wanted to make a move towards her. Their lieutenant subtly glared at one of his subordinates until one of them reluctantly moved. He kneeled down and turned her body over, examining her face.

"It's her, lieutenant," he reported.

"Give her this." He pulled out the insulin shot from one of the pockets of his military webbing and tossed it to him.

"You think it would help after she's been down here for hours?"

"Better than nothing," he replied.

The case popped when the soldier quickly opened it before he inserted the needle randomly into her arm, injecting the antiviral drug with a press. He pulled the needle out once done and started to position her, ready to pick her up and hauled her over across his shoulders.

"Wait."

The trooper turned towards him.

"Your boots." They all pointed, flashlight landing on the ground at his feet.

Tiny tendrils crawled up from the ground, attaching themselves onto his boots and creeping up to his legs like clinging vines. He quickly jerked his foot up and tugged, pulling hard and snapping strands of the tendrils when he did.

He wasn't alone in this dilemma as others noted their own legs getting caught up with this entanglement and did the same. Someone twisted open a canister of BloodTox and dropped it onto the ground, red fumes carpeting the floor. In an instant, the flesh darkened and wilted into dead matter, easily torn off with a sharp pull. The tendrils were quick to learn and crept away to avoid the fumes.

There was a shuddering exhale, a tiny whine and a sob escaped, everyone turned to the body hyperventilating on the ground.

"Uh… sir!"

The creep-flesh had quickly amassed over her, weaving into a blanket of flickering tendrils that was trying to cover and swallow her into a cocoon.

It was trying to shield her from the BloodTox.

"Get her out of there now!"

Someone was quick to grab Dana Mercer's arm and tried to pull her out of that thing that was swallowing her, but the growing cocoon stubbornly held on. Not one budge even when he put his foot down on it and pushed against as he pulled. His leg just ended up sinking into its flesh instead, and now he was trying to wrestle himself out of the thing as tendrils quickly climbed up the leg of its new prize.

"Get me out of this thing!" he shouted.

"The dart! Shoot the dart into it," their lieutenant ordered.

"What if it hurts her?"

He couldn't answer, the soldier pressed the trigger and shot the dart into the thing. The flesh of the cocoon around the plastic needle quick to melt, it spewed the thick fluid out, but the sudden burst of dead matter soon became a slow dribble.

It was fighting off the sickness.

The ground beneath them shook violently and exploded under, sending them all flying. Pointy beak snatched the soldier with the tranq rifle in mid-air, its jaw snapping the screaming man in half before throwing the body and the gun further away from reach.

They were fucked.

Gunshots fired at the Hydra from further off, it simply just soaked in the bullets when it rose even further out of its hole. The men on the ground struggled to get up, the tendrils on the floor snatching onto their arms and body into place, pulling them in towards the cocoon.

"Lieutenant!"

He struggled and tried to pull away, he felt his boot sinking down into the thing as he struggled to fight off the tendrils pinning his arms to his body. Every ounce, every drop of strength in his muscles screamed when he forced his body to push. The infected flesh on the floor ripped out of the ground in his grasp for a foothold. He breathed heavily as he felt himself sink further into the flesh of the cocoon, his eyes glancing at the other two men being pulled alongside, one was even panicking in his screaming to get away. He then rested his eyes on the rest of his soldiers further off in the tunnel, shooting at the Hydra.

The tendrils crept up his chest and on his neck from beneath his military webbing, the weight of their presence hot and heavy even through his body skin. His lungs heaved, and he swallowed deeply to clear his throat.

"BLOW THIS FUCKING PLACE DOWN UNDER!" he screamed his last order.

He couldn't hear the rest, he couldn't see the rest, the back of his head locked and pressed against the hot flesh of the cocoon as tendrils crept up his face and around his gas mask, the creep-flesh covering the lens of his goggles.

Then it swallowed him.

* * *

 _'Help me.'_

 _Spread._

 _'Alex?'_

 _Home._

 _'Please. Help me.'_

 _Light._

 _'Where are you?'_

 _Hope._

 _'I don't want to be here. Please…'_

 _Red._

 _'I'm scared.'_

 _Mother._

It was wet, everywhere around him, on him, in him, in the back of his throat, in the back of his eyes, in the pit of his stomach, in his lungs that fought and heave.

It was hot, scalding hot even.

The taste in his mouth bitter and salty, metallic. Sweet.

The heartbeat in his ears roared.

There was nothing but darkness. A darkness that steadily pulsed, almost lulling.

He shouldn't be here.

Gregory Thompson twitched.

Why was he here?

What was he doing here?

He stared at the depth of darkness stirring around him. A part of him was aware there was someone behind him.

A comforting presence that made him calm. He burrowed his face and nestled in, the taste in his mouth salty and sweeter.

Ark. He twitched again. The Ark. They lost the Ark. Got to get it back.

They fucked it up. They took it away. Let the animals escape.

Got to get it back.

Had to clean up after them. Had to deal with this bullshit.

He needed to do something.

He shouldn't be here.

His hands moved and tightened, he could feel the tip of his fingers pressed into his palms.

He shouldn't be here.

Gregory jerked and kicked. His feet met something soft but thick, a flimsy stretchy material when he pressed his legs against it.

Got to get out. Got to get it back. Got to get her out.

He kicked again, punching right through and his foot met the slippery ground. He frantically kicked and pushed again, forcing his way through, digging himself out. His head was first to emerge from the cocoon and he was immediately greeted with cooler and dry air. With a firm grasp on the outer layer of the shell, he tugged his arm out repeatedly then pulled himself out with a shove, stumbling into freedom and landing onto the still beating scorched-ground, a thick puddle of warm fluid spilling out with him.

Charred flesh and meat marred with cracks met his hands. His chest heavy with tendrils clinging onto him, and he quickly tore the flesh off his suit in his brief crouching before he remembered.

Turning around, he dug back into the cocoon, blindly searching in the dark until he firmly felt the body. Then he pulled, and he pulled hard.

There wasn't any struggle this time. She easily came out from the cocoon that he slid his footings from the fluid and landed on his back with her in tow. On his back again, in the hive, surrounded with pulsating infected flesh filled with the virus, covered in a mess of fluid, he laid there drowsily staring at the woman asleep by his side and all he could think, sleep would feel good about now.

Got to move. His body jerked and lifted itself up. Got to get back. He crouched down by her head then pulled her up to a stand, took her arm and tucked his head under her armpit, her arm going over the back of his neck then down his other shoulder. He bent down, hooking his arm over the back of her knee then lifted her up, her stomach pressed against the back of his shoulder.

Got to get back. Got to move. He stumbled when he walked towards the tunnel, passing by the remains of his men and the burnt body of the Hydra, its fluid feeding the hive as it slowly repaired the damages done to the nursery.

Got to get out. He walked with the weight resting heavily on his shoulders. Got to move.

Sleep would be good, his eyes drooping as his feet stumbled beneath him. He quickly caught himself and keep moving.

He's done worse, had trekked worse, had carried worse. This wasn't bad. This wasn't fucking fifty-four hours of boot camp. There weren't forty miles of bullshit.

This was Manhattan. This was the Red Zone. This was a fucking underground hive that had killed all his men.

He stumbled and collapsed to the ground, landing on all four. The girl's body slid off his back and onto the ground. His chest heave, throat threatened to choke, and he realized he has been holding his breath in. His hand jerked towards his helmet and tore the gas mask off, the cooler air met the face of his skin.

He immediately moved to the side and vomited the content of his lungs, the infected fluid escaping from his body.

Oh God, he wanted to lie down so much.

He collapsed back to the ground then turned his eyes towards her. She slept peacefully like a baby, a part of him felt like prodding her. Got to get her out. Got to get out. He crawled over and reached out with his gloved hand. He shook her.

She didn't stir. He stared. Sleep would be good, he thought and slowly laid down right beside her.

Sleep would be good.

* * *

Fingers brushed the corner of his bottom lip. He briefly opened his eyes to stare back at hers. Her eyes gleamed in the dark like yellow cat eyes. Her breath hot when he felt her exhale on his face. Her nose a mere inch away as she laid right across him.

Why wasn't he wearing his mask again?

She continued brushing his lips in a repetitive rhythm then slipped her finger in. He was suddenly aware the coppery sweet taste in his mouth and he felt some bit of it escape from his lips. He sucked his breath in and swallowed, a small part of him realizing he had just lapped up and tasted the tip of her finger.

She smiled.

 _'They listen to you. Will you listen to me?'_

* * *

Gregory jerked awake, he was met with the sight of a sleeping woman across him. He quickly pulled himself up and sat there on the ground, gazing at the surrounding around them.

It wasn't pitch dark down here. He blinked. He could see the shapes of the rocks, the jagged and smoothly carved formation of the tunnel.

He could see in the dark. He turned and rested his eyes back on the girl. Her eyes shut, deeply asleep as she should be, but still too close to his liking.

He exhaled. He was fucked either way.

But at least, at least he could give one last _fuck you_ to the Infected. He got up and walked back into the hive, or the remnants of it if the marks of chemical burn and black scorch mark were a clue. He searched the ground, found only cold brass of carbine bullets but didn't give up.

His eyes finally landed on the familiar shape of a rifle and he reached down to the dismembered body on the ground. He unclasped the tranq gun and put it over his neck before pausing at the military webbing. A quick search of the content, he found the samples within. Unbuckling his own, he switched gears.

He got back up, quick to check the darts left in the tranq gun then he made his way back to the tunnel where she waited.

He lifted her up over his shoulder and simply just marched towards his exit without further ado.

A morbid thought wondered if he was even going the right way, was this even the tunnel that they got in?

He really didn't care. He wasn't going to last anyway, so wandering endlessly down here wouldn't be the worst of it.

He marched in silence, aware the missing footsteps that had walked alongside him in the beginning, his breathing was his only company.

He walked for a long time, an hour or two, or even more until he felt the slight incline up. He began his climb. From the distant, he saw the light at the end of the tunnel. He could also hear the loud pumps of the familiar BloodTox blowers and he hesitated at that.

What did it matter? He was going to get shot anyway, put out of his agony. He sniggered and continued his climb before he started to cough violently. Mild allergy, shitty flu, whooping cough, he thought to himself. She slightly slid down his back and he hefted her up, only to frown when he found a thin film of translucent membrane starting to coat her body.

He wasn't alone with his mild allergy. He laughed.

Up he went, the distant glow growing brighter and brighter. He was finally bathed under the glow of glaring lights, back to hard concrete, back to the clean ass-paprika of BloodTox, back under Blackwatch's gaze. The air alive with the sound of helicopter's rotors in the distant. What he would give to be in one of them right now.

He heard a thundering slam and he slightly flinched when the D-Code landed in front of him.

"Hey Burchfield," he said quite calmly and couldn't help grinning.

He was losing it. He had a sudden urge to laugh loudly.

"Lieutenant Gregson," the D-Code drawled.

"It's Thompson, you fucker," he replied testily.

The giant just stared at him from behind his black rectangular device.

"You're infected," he said.

"No shit."

"You're still alive and still you."

He looked up and stared, squinting at the glaring lights that shone down from behind the D-Code. "How long have I been down there?" he asked.

"Sixteen hours."

It felt a lot more than that.

"Pass me your radio," he ordered.

Sergeant Bryan Burchfield gave a pause before he pulled it out and handed it to him.

With a click of a button, he exhaled, mentally preparing to say one simple line. "Red Crown, this is Lieutenant Thompson. Mission accomplished."

"Status report," she said coldly.

"Twenty… twenty-two down. I lost them all. Down there."

She said nothing but what to expect from the goddess of Death, Warfare, and Victory. You pray to her for reinforcement and for the rain of fire, not a pat back for a job well done. He passed the radio back. "Well, do your job, soldier," he told the D-Code. "With a bullet, please. Not your fists," he added quickly.

He wasn't sure if the super solder had grinned or not when he stared at him from behind that rectangular box. "You haven't let go of the care package." Burchfield pointed.

Strangely, he barely felt her presence at all. He paused and glanced at the weight on his shoulder. Slowly, he knelt and laid her on the ground, made a quick mental decision right there to place the rest of his gears down too. It was during that moment, Burchfield had taken his pistol out and was now pointing at him.

"It's been good working with you, Lieutenant," he said courteously.

The shot came expectantly, a puncture through the left lung, then the right.

The head came next.

The third bang and the bullet whizzed past his ear.

He had just dodged a point-blank shot to the head.


	2. Lab Rat

**Chapter One: Lab Rat**

* * *

The walls were white, painted over poured smooth slabs of the concrete wall. He was a bit surprised there were willing to pay the extra expense over a white paint. It was not like it would make any difference. Solitary was still solitary.

They had taken him back to Maryland. With his own men pointing their guns towards him, he waited on his knees with his hands on his head with BloodTox fumes stinging his eyes and throat, the spotlights glaring onto him from behind the armed soldiers of Blackwatch. Execution by firing squad. Dana Mercer was taken into decontamination trailer first, and he wasn't sure if that girl should be called lucky or not to receive Blackwatch's first class treatment. She came out still asleep in her new white hospital gown, cleaned off from whatever translucent membrane that had covered her. She was put into a circular clear plastic containment tent strapped to her mobile bed and taken away into Blackhawk Thunder Two-Fifteen that had been designated specifically for her while he was led to another decontamination trailer and was told to strip off his outer gear.

He was kind of glad since he didn't need to deal with the stink of dead infected blood on him anymore and he didn't need to strip off his body suit… at least, not yet. Even how used he was to his suit, something he had been yelled and drilled to be his second skin, it was still an uncomfortable piece of gear and was difficult to get in and out of. Amongst professionals, military crude humor still lingered. It didn't take long for the comparison of protective skin suit eluded to. A common joke amongst Blackwatch men that the body suit was designed specifically to be difficult to take a piss in it and discouraged recreation of the unwholesome type.

Blackwatch held strict standard even in that regard and would have their soldier not taking any break out in the combat field.

An hour and more later, they came back with a containment cage… that looked more like an overlarge dog kennel. No, it was even worse than a dog kennel, a solid steel box that looked more fitting for a Hunter to be kept in.

Smelled like one had died in there too.

He only grinned wryly when he stepped into his box.

"You seemed cheerful," Burchfield commented.

"I was a Devil Dog once, you know… so it's not lost on me." He gave a dry smile at his cage.

The D-Code made a snort before he gestured to someone. "Once a dog, always a dog," he said.

The cage then shut after him.

Of course, he was not allowed to step back into Blackhawk with his men. He could even understand the logic. What if he went mad? What if he became monster there and then during the transfer? It would cause a chaos with the worst outcome being a crashed helicopter with everyone dead. Best to separate and prevent the risk from happening.

Pragmatic and ruthless. What else to expect?

He couldn't resent them, just wondering when the worst was to come.

So he sat in his cage, the shaking, swing, the deafening roar of Blackhawk's engines and wind he paid no mind. An obedient dog waiting for his dreaded vet call where they might put him down or stick needles in him without understanding what the fuck was going on. Without understanding… perhaps that was why animals were terrified, while he was calm.

There was no use for panicking and worrying.

Before deployment, he was hoping his end of year leave would be approved. Kiss that goodbye.

His family waiting expectantly for his next letter? Well, Blackwatch would tell a sorry tale how their son won't be coming back home.

Not like he was close to his old man and his blue-collared older brother anyway. Six-years away, enlisted as a Marine tended to put distance between those who led different lifestyle. Another four years in a covert army wasn't going to make any difference in that regard.

The few hours of flight pondering how much he was going to lose of what simple small luxury and freedom he had did nothing but soured his mood. He had come out of his cage into Fort Detrick's airfield, the helicopter's rotors still roaring as more guns pointed at him with the newly minted tranq rifle being amidst the squad. He was escorted into the research facility that only Blackwatch personnel was allowed, led through a series of corridors, down an elevator, and was left in a room by himself.

With only a camera and speaker as his company, he was told to strip naked, give up the rest of his gears, step into some shower room and was told to decontaminate again. The jet water was uncomfortably hot and stinging against his skin this time. Tedious, strict and dehumanizing but something he and his men had went through alone or together in boot camp. A typical decontamination procedure all Blackwatch had to go through whenever if it was necessary to get out of their combat gear. He couldn't even take his time to relax since the water was shut off without his prompting. When he got out, all his gears were gone, just his new prison clothes waited for him.

Instead of the bright orange, it was a white singlet and pants. At least it wasn't some hospital gown, and they had given him a towel to dry off and plain cut underwear.

Heh, that was funny to think about.

Outside the decontamination room, more people waited for him, wearing yellow hazmat suits instead with carbine rifles still pointed at him. They led him to a room with a solid steel door that slid open, probably remote control by someone with direct feed of the camera at the corner of the door.

A short session of them taking three samples of his blood, he was then left alone in this white room. It had a bed, a metal toilet, a steady bright fluorescent light that bathed the room into a timeless zone, a camera watching in the corner, but no window and nothing else.

Solitary.

He went to bed early. It did nothing. The light too bright for his eyes.

He got up, did push up, sit up, run on spot, imagined he was back on strict schedule with training, meeting and boring paperwork to deal with. For the last ten years, his life was strict, regimented and his body and mind were not willing to give up this sudden lack of pattern. A hundred push up, a hundred sit up, a hundred side-straddle hop, a hundred squat. He found himself not winded, so he kept going.

He paced back and forth, the length of the room too short to run or sprint, so he walked. He thought about mathematic equations, he thought about facts, he thought about Marine Corps history and names of famous Marines, he thought about Blackwatch history that he had been briefed and told to memorize before promoted as First Lieutenant, he muttered the creed over and over again. He thought about all the things he had yelled at and for, the embarrassing and the insane moments that questioned his commitment living on base with his fellow Marines as their Sergeant.

He thought about his deployment in stinky hot Afghanistan that earned him a recruitment spot in Blackwatch.

He started counting.

Food never came and neither did hunger.

Boredom started to chip his steady regimented mind. Has it been an hour or more, or a half an hour?

Then he started to think of the men he had lost in Operation Ark, the stung of failure started to well up in the back of his throat. He knew these men only by four years, forced himself to train alongside them when he knew he didn't need to as their First Lieutenant. His concern should be focused on following the higher-ups of Blackwatch's command, but old Marines habits die hard. He started muttering their ranks and the squad they belonged to.

He should have ordered them all to retreat, demanded additional reinforcement regardless of insubordination, secure the tunnel with all his platoon then clear out that god-fucking-hell of a hive. But good luck receiving reinforcement when Blackwatch was trying to regroup and pick themselves up after Taggart, ZEUS, and the whole Manhattan fiasco.

He was picked, drawn the short straw amidst the chaos of Blackwatch's command in shamble. Someone had to act, had to act fast, had to secure and produce results, and his platoon was chosen in honor as an answer to this gambit despite all the risks the retrieval mission entailed. A simple pick up turned into a nightmare of battling and clearing out a Red Zone. Dependable First Lieutenant Thompson fulfilling his duty amidst Blackwatch's headless chicken moment.

He started to laugh.

There were dark sentiments, the more fanatical side of Blackwatch wanting to bite out Dana Mercer's head and have her burn with the rest of the infected. In the eyes of those who viewed containment as their life and law, Dana Mercer was simply a bio-hazard because of her proximity with ZEUS.

What did Blackwatch want with Dana Mercer anyway?

He repeated his pattern. Did his exercise, thought about facts, history, math, said his multiplication out loud, then his alphabets backward and forward. He forced himself to rest, sit on his bed, breathed in deeply, think of nothing as long as he could, before the itch to start his pattern began anew.

"How long am I going to be in here?" he asked aloud at the camera.

No answer came. Nothing. He squinted and examined the camera closely, noticed what looked like some noise detection hole in its base. He stared at the ceiling above, there was a circular speaker built into it and metal sprinklers. He wondered if this room was commonly used to roast captives right before Blackwatch's prime interrogation.

He went back to his self-formed regular pattern and went like this for hours. With boredom chipping his patience and mind crying out for new stimulation, his typical sex-starved corner of his brain wandered in. He lingered on some fantasies, some old less stellar memories of crappy high school relationship and from his time in the Marines. He was more the guy who watched from the sideline at others attempts and be amused when all went wrong. He thought about some pretty woman his mind came up and probably took from some forgotten magazine, film, or a picture on the net or someone he happened to meet. Mouth, legs, hip, naked body, sweats, and salts. Then he remembered the sensation of her finger repeatedly brushing the corner of his mouth, his first intimacy with a woman in years. He recalled the sweet coppery taste on his tongue, the lulling darkness he had spent down there in that hellhole.

He quickly pushed it aside, put it in the back of his mind as he always did. Frustration, while an irritating distraction a part of him welcomed in this situation, he still didn't feel desperate enough to indulge the delirious depravity side of his human brain.

He remembered a study that the brain would welcome pain than condemn itself dealing with boredom. It was a human compulsion, a never-ending drive to seek stimulant that led itself to healthy brain growth instead of stagnation.

He began to methodically click his fingers and joints, a habit he had stopped in his teenage years but now picking up again. Did the same with his toes, laughed himself how fucking desperate he was. He forced himself to sit, to breathe in and stop counting. He felt his lungs expand pressed against his chest. He held his breath.

He waited for the feeling of his chest burning, for the pressure in the back of eyes and nose, for the shaking. Two minutes mark pass, then three, four, six, eight, nine, ten…

He had to wait for a long time before the feeling came and forced him to gasp for air.

He started to get curious.

Gregory stared at his hand before he firmly grasped his ring finger and did the stupidest thing he had ever done in his entire life.

He purposely dislocated his finger.

* * *

"Motherfucker!"

"I was waiting for that," the scientist said in amusement at the footage at the man sat hunched over on his bed.

"Wait," his colleague spoke.

With a grit of his teeth, they watched him clutch his hand and breath in short rapid motion before he violently snapped his finger back in his place. A casual shake of his hand before stretching and curling it back into fist, it was back to being good as new.

"Some people can do that in real life," the scientist brushed this off-handedly.

"How many hours he's been like this?"

"Fifteen."

"No progress or symptoms?"

"None."

* * *

He was back doing his regular pattern again, stubborn to stick to it in fact lest his mind found pain a tempting distraction again. He wasn't feeling tired one bit and that was even worst.

He hasn't gone to toilet.

He hasn't felt the gnawing hunger.

What was going on with his body? Did it just… stop? Was he in some purgatory coma? He was very tempted to punch the wall even at the risk of being shot at. He forced himself to sit down, forced himself to breathe in again, to lie down, shut his eyes.

He used the pillow to cover his face and blocked the light. Even better, he turned, laid on his front, eyes facing away from the light and covered his head. He shut his eyes, slowed down his breathing and he waited.

He listened.

The walls had no padding, the floor had no carpet. It was plain stone and concrete. While he couldn't hear any noise, he could feel the slightest vibration.

Or was it his imagination?

The tap, tap, tap of some footsteps outside his room, perhaps? A part of him hoped it would lead to his room but the next minutes or so told him to not hold onto such hope. He opened his eyes, met with a pale imitation of darkness with the white glaring light seeping into the corner of his vision. He shut his eyes again and focused himself to listen for any single noise.

He started to hear the rush of his blood roaring in his ears.

He started to hear the soft ringing.

He started to hear his steady heartbeat.

His thoughts slowly wondered then turned formless, shifting to simple shapes and colors.

Into something red.

Into something terrifying. He was falling, screaming with something clutching his mid-section in a crushing grip that punched and jabbed into him whenever they stopped falling.

It hurt, she wanted to stop, she wanted to run, she wanted it to let go. Just let her go. Why didn't it let her go? She called out his name, the name she always screamed when she had a nightmare.

 _Alex_.

 _My son…_

A lullaby, a disjointed humming, a sense of dread that stilled him, a young woman with green eyes and red locks smiled serenely down on him from over his head. Her finger rested on her mouth with blood smeared the corner of her lips. She made a soft _shhing_ noise as she stroked his hair to the side with his head in her lap. Sweet, gentle, wholesome, safe. Safe. Safe with _us_.

 _Mother._

But she was no longer there. A nightmare took her place, her nightmare, their nightmare.

He was a nightmare.

He tore and hunted them down, cut him in half with his blade, claws and whip, crushed his chest into a pulp of flesh with his feet, smashed the back of his neck with the blade of his elbow, then reeled him in into his body of darkness. Hunt. Consume. Kill. He bared his teeth in a snarl and grin, threw his victim up as they screamed and snatched them in mid-air. A horrifying creature that stalked and killed, hunted _us_ , hurt _us_ , break _us_ to pieces. Whose voices roared with cacophony of whispering minds of its victims, his anger a terrifying sight to behold. He terrified her. This was not her Alex. Her Alex would never do this, would never hurt her. He reached out with his hand, tried to brush her cheek, but his fingers were claws that sliced into her skin and cut through her body. His blue eyes cold, predatory and unrelenting.

 _He hurts us._

 _Tears us apart._

 _Kills us_

 _He's coming for us._

That's not her brother. That's not her brother. That's not her brother.

 _Monster. Monster. Monster._

 _'Make it stop.'_ She wept and cried out. _'Make it stop!'_

For a moment there, he thought he was back in that hive, back in that hellhole, back where there was only death, her and him. Her blue eyes gleamed in the dark like cats. Her breath hot against his face, she laid a mere inch away across him.

 _'I'm scared.'_ She whispered.

 _Why?_ The thought came unbidden.

Her distant eyes focused as if she heard him, could see him and realized he was there for the first time. Her fingertip reached out and hesitated before she rested it onto him and said one thing,

 _'Dog?'_

Gregory woke up with a start, throat convulsing and he gagged, choked, coughed violently then he started laughing. He laughed, curling on his bed and rolling onto the floor. He paused for a brief moment, breathing rapidly then only had to remember the one word, _dog_.

He started losing it again and covered his tears-ridden face with his shaking hands. The sense of dread never left and still deep in his core.

"I'm fucking losing my-" he whispered.

"-LOSING MY MIND!" someone screamed.

The ground shook and he stiffened. He straightened, quickly rose up from the floor, his eyes on the wall when he felt the heavy crash. He heard the sound of footsteps rushed past his door.

"On the ground now, Bradley!" someone commanded.

"Not unless you tell me what the fuck is going on with me!" a man snarled.

Gregory stilled when he heard the sound of gunshots.

"On the ground now, soldier!"

 _Bradley?_ Gregory frowned. Corporal Bradley? He was in the fireteam that worked closely with him if he was not mistaken. In fact, Bradley was the one that made a grab for Dana Mercer and was swallowed in the cocoon alongside him. Simply because of being unlucky enough to be part of the three accompanying their salty First Lieutenant.

He was alive.

There were others beside him. Others that had survived that hellhole of a hive.

Which was funny, the typical protocol by Blackwatch would be to terminate him.

* * *

"Lieutenant Gregory Thompson." The white hazmat suit stated. "Twenty-nine, Caucasian, grew up in the West. No family history of disorders, your medical record shows you're quite clean. Other than that, perfectly healthy."

He sat in a shambled state across the interrogation table, circles already under his dark blue eyes and his skin a pale unhealthy shade. "This fucking sucks," Gregory muttered.

"But better than solitary, right?" The scientist humored the sleep-deprived soldier.

"Is this punishment?" he said this softly.

"No. This is testing," he admitted quite honestly. "So far you have not developed any other symptoms of infection."

"I'm clean?" he asked with dull surprise.

The suit laughed quite softly at that. "Do you know the Trojan war story?"

"It's about a stupid ancient war over some woman and an apple," Gregory answered.

"Well, basically yes. But that's not the point. What I'm saying here is… to put it simply. You are that Trojan horse. A gift too good to be true."

"A Trojan virus?" His blue eyes sharpened.

"Multiple strains in fact," he stated to the man. "Some of them the same one we found in the infected variants, but the dominant strains we found in you are completely new and different. Never seen before."

"Why am I not sick, then?" Gregory demanded.

"You see, do you understand why we're perplexed with your situation?" The scientist stated. "The changes the infected go through takes a few hours to a maximum three days. The virus we're dealing with is fast and extremely contagious. I would even say lethal… but my lab partner has different views regarding that."

"Your point?" he asked.

"We wanted to study the effects and the progress of the virus. The changes an infected go through. It's a reason we were monitoring you in solitary. But again, you've shown no progress… you and others," The scientist stated.

"Bradley?" Gregory muttered.

"You knew?" The scientist asked in surprise.

"I heard him shouting," he admitted.

The scientist paused and looked at him. "You have a very sharp hearing, Lieutenant. Is there anything else you know?"

"No," he said.

"Are you sure? We noticed signs of anxiety and depression, Lieutenant. Is there something wrong?"

Gregory couldn't help but sneer. "Solitary breaks the mind. Anxiety, depression is a typical response when stripped of any form of stimulant. So yes, if you're asking if my brain is responding correctly to the situation, then I say it's been going great!"

"We apologize for the inconvenience."

Gregory snorted. "How many have recovered from that hellhole? Is it only Bradley?" he demanded.

"Concerned about your men?"

He glared. "Yes," he said softly.

"Besides you, two others. Making three, a lucky number, if you ask me," the scientist noted. "I do want to ask something, and it is to do with Bradley Kirk."

"What about him?" he said.

"Did you know he's a clinical psychopath?" the scientist asked.

"I've seen his diagnosis, yes. Wouldn't have known if it weren't for his record. But Bradley hasn't been any inconvenience. He's got ice in his vein and a pretty damn exemplary soldier for the rest," Gregory said.

"Are you familiar with his normal behavior he puts in front of others?" the scientist asked.

"Easygoing, the jokester of the group, an uncouth mouth," Gregory said and frowned. "Why are you asking?"

"Bradley suffered a breakdown after twenty-eight hours in isolation. He's… shown an extreme reaction that goes against his mental condition. He mentions hearing a woman even."

Gregory remained expressionless. "It's progressing in him?"

"We're not sure. We scheduled a brain scan for him in the meantime, which we want to do the same with you also." The scientist offered. "We also plan a full body scan and there might be intensive procedures in the future."

"Intensive?"

"We just want to sample your muscle tissues and examine your… performance," he said quite nonchalantly.

"Is this because of Brad?" Gregory grimaced. "What did he do?"

"Other than kicking down a solid steel door? Surprisingly not much," the scientist answered.

"And the third survivor you mentioned, what's his status?" Gregory asked.

"Carlos Ramirez is still in coma, I'm afraid."

"And Dana Mercer?"

"Is there a reason for asking?" the scientist said.

"Bradley was by my side when we were down in that hell," Gregory answered. "And because of that, he was dragged into that… meat-cocoon alongside me. I suspect Carlos was found in there as well?" He looked at the suit.

The scientist nodded. "Would you like to recount your tale from down there."

"We should have died," Gregory stated. "The moment the Hydras appeared, we would have easily been wiped out there and then. Fucking monsters were everywhere, it's like the tunnels grew teeth all of sudden and were about to eat us."

"What happened?"

"The tranq dart. It scared them away."

"It was effective?"

"It's better than bullets, but not effective enough. Didn't stop the monster from lashing out and crushing some of the men," he said. "It did the job."

"That's good to know."

"It didn't work for long," Gregory said dismissively. "We used it again when we tried to grab Dana Mercer."

"On another Hydra?"

"No… when we tried to get Dana Mercer out of that hive we found her. The fucking… ground tried to stop us. Sentient creep-vines but as living meat climbing on our gears. BloodTox solved that problem, but it made a grab of Dana Mercer. Covered her, cocooned her into those pustules you find growing on hives," Gregory said. "We shot a dart into it, but it fought off the… infection, then the Hydra attacked again. Killed our main guy with the tranq rifle. The rest of us were thrown off and dragged into the cocoon with her."

"No one else were chosen?"

 _Chosen?_ Gregory frowned. "No. It's just us that happened to be close to Dana Mercer. The rest of the men were setting up the demolition equipment, but the explosion didn't kill us."

"It would have if it weren't for the cocoon," the scientist said cheerfully. "In some way, the hive seems to be protecting its newborn infected, don't you think?"

Gregory made a show of disgust. "I rather shoot myself."

"I'm not surprised the dart didn't work. A Leader Hunter is capable of fighting off and recover from the Blacklight infection, did you know?" the scientist said. "The hive is a giant system with a complex immune system to support it. The stronger infected variants share this trait and are also a part of this system, the Runner being the heart of it since they are the producer of strains."

"And?" Gregory asked, sounding bored.

"The dart may be capable of hurting the infected lethally, Lieutenant. But it's another to say it's capable of interfering with a giant system and with a Runner in its present."

"There was no Runner in present unless you're saying Dana Mercer was."

" _Is_. Or in the making. The odds of another Runner produced in this outbreak comes to no surprise what with the number of lives taken by the infection. But to think it would be another Mercer. The strains we found in you and in others, we found in her with more new strains never seen before," the scientist said. "Even then, her case is unique."

"What difference does it make?" Gregory scoffed. "A Runner is a Runner."

"Plenty. It is in fact very difficult to replicate the result. You have to take into account the host genetic combability with the strain for one and to find the one person with the lucky genetic pot out of millions is resource extensive even for an organization like Blackwatch. Not to mention Redlight's 99.999 mortality rate makes that chance of surviving the process even more slim."

"You're saying Runners are like a freak of nature?"

"A freak of nature that keeps happening again and again through the four decades ever since the Pandora's Box was opened in 1969, an incidental process one we still poorly understand," the scientist said. "But for the first time ever,

A Runner had managed to pass its torch to another."

* * *

"Pariah, are you still upset from moving here?"

The six-year-old boy shrugged as he watched the documentary scene on the T.V.

"Care to tell me what you are watching?"

"Beehive," the boy clipped and made no move nor a change of expression when his caretaker sat down beside him.

"Anything interesting you've noted?"

"The mother doesn't produce milk," he mumbled.

"Mother? You mean the queen bee? Well, that makes sense. All the energy needs to be spent on laying eggs, she's got none to spare for producing milk."

"But what if she produces her own milk? For the baby queen."

"Well, kind of inefficient I would say since the worker bees do that job for her."

"Maybe not milk… maybe a cream?" The boy mumbled nonsensically. "Do dogs like cream?"

"The hive makes and feeds the queen for her, Pariah," his caretaker pointed out. "The queen just lays the egg into the queen cell."

"But that makes the baby queen more special than the other baby queens then." The boy smiled quietly. "She's the only one that got to drink mother's milk while the others didn't."

"I don't quite understand the logic?"

"Mother chose her," he mumbled as he watched the screen emptily. "Mother didn't choose other, but she chose her." His green eyes suddenly narrowed. "The drones are useless, all they do is sit and wait around, why can't they leave the hive?" He sounded a bit bitter when he made that comment.

"Well, the conditions have to be right before they can, Pariah."

"When will it be right?" the boy grumbled.

"When it's spring, where other virgin queen bees will be available. If all else fail, they still get kicked out before winter anyway. Like you said, drones are no benefit to a hive if they cannot produce results in a time of need. They can't even defend the hive from invaders, they've got no stingers." His caretaker slightly laughed.

"So if they're useful they can stay, right?" the boy asked.

"I suppose," his caretaker said.

Pariah frowned and looked away from the screen. "Let me think about it," he mumbled.

"Well, I'll leave you off with your thinking then, but do pay attention to the documentary. A lot of your questions would have been answered if you had listened."

"I am listening," the boy said sullenly. "Can I ask you a question before you go?" He looked up.

From the clear visor of her helmet, she made a surprised expression.

"What happens if a predator wasp comes across a queen bee?"

"Depends, does she have a hive with her?"

"She's been taken away from her home, but she's got her guard dogs, does that count?"

"It takes a large swarm of a hive to kill a single wasp, stingers are not enough. She will most likely get eaten by the predator."

"Her dogs are garbage then," he muttered before turning back to his screen.

His caretaker just stared before she made a shrugging motion at the camera in the corner. But at least he wasn't sulking anymore from being moved to Ft. Detrick and he was coming around talking to her.

"I'll be seeing you later, Pariah."

He didn't reply even at the sound of the door hissing open.

"Dogs are useless anyway," she heard him mutter.

* * *

AN: In the next chapter…

 **Lieutenant Gregory's Body: All Runners are Queen!**

 **Lieutenant Gregory's Brain: If she BREATHES she a THOOOOT!**

 **Lieutenant Gregory: …woof.**


	3. TROJANS

**Chapter Two: TROJANS**

* * *

It took few hours to get to where they were, transporting those BloodTox blowers down here and slowly pushing back the hives from reclaiming. The tunnel filled with the red mist of viricides, the construction lights installed throughout to light up the path behind them. It helped with the visibility somewhat. Night vision still required some light sources to make it work, and in a tunnel close to absolute darkness and closed off from natural lights, long-range visibility was reduced to the length of their flashlight's range. The uneven ground hardly made for a perfect road, rising and falling at random from either debris or unexpected drops. It would be a complete fucking nightmare if it comes to holding off the infected in these conditions.

Thermal imaging helped a little, the temperature of the tunnel was just as worse as the hottest time in a desert, where the temperature of the body was the same as the environment, but the difference was the air itself felt heavy and dense with moisture, and hotter… since the infected's body seemed to favor higher body temperature.

It felt like they were in the throat of a large monster. He could feel the droplets of water condensing on his suit.

They were beyond the established presence of Blackwatch, scouting the area ahead away from the lights and viricides fumes, in the total darkness of this tunnel surrounded by pulsating meat roots.

"Why the hell aren't we blowing this place up to smithereens?" a disgruntled soldier said aloud.

"Because it's no guarantee we'll be rid of them," Bryan replied to his squad as they walked alongside him. "Even if we cut them off, the Hydra could easily dig up around the blockades." Not unless they destroy the entire tunnel.

"So why aren't they attacking, sir?"

"Don't know," the D-Code drawled. "But we're going to take our chances while we can."

On the plus side, Thompson and his team had cleared out their obstacles if the worm-like large corpses were a clue.

"Man, I can't believe a peashooter did this," a soldier said as they passed by the dead Hydra. "I want one," he added to himself.

"The Hydra, or the gun?"

"Fuck you, you know what I meant."

Dull glints of carbine cases on the ground were found further ahead, and what came with empty bullet cases were corpses of Hunters and Walkers a few distances away. In these low-visibility conditions, he couldn't help but give grudging respect to the Lieutenant and the men with him for dealing with the infected… even if they were from a less experienced battalion filling in the severe losses Blackwatch felt here. As if he should be the one to judge harshly, the D-Code thought ruefully. He was a recently made sergeant as well.

What other times, if not now, could Blackwatch test and push the mettle of their future soldiers, to prove the worth of years of their training – soldiers who shall continue its creed and duties when time and age would force older generations to step down.

The band of soldiers continued their march, passing by the corpses on the ground slowly being assimilated back by the meat moss roots. The large vector of the virus wasn't the most troubling aspect of this infection, it's the persistence of the infected. Dead corpses may be useless in terms of spreading the infection, as the virus has no means to travel and grow without living cells to help it, but dead corpses can feed the infected microorganisms.

A symbiotic relationship that made it deadly, but one Blackwatch scientists were marveling at.

The small banter that had companied him had become grim silence. Weapons lax and ready in the arms were now raised. It was still far too strange to have encountered nothing hostile after walking for this long in a Red Zone. It was just not right.

Their lights pierced the total darkness, revealing the burnt charred remnants of the cavernous intersection. Fresh red roots were already reclaiming their place, spreading from the fluid spilled from a corpse of the Hydra that laid still on the ground, burying of what was left of the soldiers in NBC gears.

"Ah, Jesus," someone muttered. "What the fuck, th-they're still breathing."

Flashlight rested on one of the pulsating mounds barely hiding the living body beneath. The D-Code walked over and was still by the sight; his mind couldn't help but imagine the fate the soldier went through.

The victim had managed to dodge death by fire, but from the twist of his body, he didn't escape the force of the explosion. To be left barely alive and crawling from the aftermath, no one to hear his call, choking and unable to breathe, surrounded with an overwhelming presence of darkness, only to feel something worse creeping in around him. Consumed by the infection, he…it breathed and gasped at his feet despite the threads of this hive had weaved into its neck and riddled its body.

The men made no comment when the expected sound of crushed bones and flesh came, but even without the head, the body still moved and breathed, the rise and fall of its movements one with the pulse of the infection.

"We got a survivor, sir," a soldier spoke.

He turned towards a pustule that sat in the center, pulsating amidst charred, burnt flesh of its surrounding. Rifles behind him corrected their aims when the flashlights rested onto the small figure crouched against it.

He sat there completely nonchalant with an empty gaze, coated with a dark fluid of fuck-knows-what as he rested his head against it. His headgear discarded by the side of his lap.

A quick check through thermal imaging, there was no doubt this man was infected considering the glowing yellow form of his body matched the monstrosity pulsating behind him. His screen flashed back to night vision, the infected soldier just stared with a slow blink in reply, his eyes a pair of white gleams when he turned his gaze towards him. That was no typical Walker response. They tended to be vicious fuckers that try to bite and gnaw anything they could hand their hands on.

He knew this man, he was a survivor like him who had his previous platoon wiped out entirely when ZEUS destroyed the military base he was in. Blackwatch had managed to pull him out of those rubbles of dead men after hours of search and rescue.

"Private," he called out. "Private Carlos," the D-Code said again as he quickly gestured the no-shoot signal over his shoulder. He was not willing to risk triggering that self-preserving instinct, considering Gregory's speed reaction. At least, not within this distance.

" _Help me_ ," a hoarse voice slipped from the man and he rose up from the ground with an unsteady step.

His feet instead slid on some fluids and he collapsed back onto the ground, landing on all four. Slowly and carefully, he rose up again without the limp and unsteadiness that had weighed him down, his eyes wide and wild, flickering all over the place.

"Stay where you are, soldier," Bryan ordered.

He did for a moment, unflinching at the glares of the light.

" _Help me_ ," he muttered and moved towards them.

A gunshot thundered in an answer.

"Not one step-" The shout of command was not finished when he lunged, but a choked snarl of crushed windpipes spat right back when the D-Code side-stepped into his path and snatched him in mid-air by the neck.

Bryan slammed him down onto the ground, the loud crack and pops of broken bones came easily when he tightened his grip. His handiwork nothing more but mangled mess of meat and bones around the neck. A mangled mess that was still writhing and alive, resewing itself whole.

"Fuck, that's creepy."

He stared dispassionately at the mess on his gloved hand. It was like watching magnetic fluid in motion. A mind of its own, the thick trails of blood slowly dribbled and crawled down his arm. When he raised his hand, there was a brief slowness in its reaction, a small second of pausing at the change of direction of the gravity. It was quick to correct itself and head back down the path to the ground, almost natural if it weren't for the fact it was coalescing into some squirming fluid that crawled more than slid. Some of the smeared mess had already escaped, droplets that had slipped back into the fleshy roots of this underground hive system.

He laid his gaze back onto the ground, at the infected soldier by his feet. A dazed look stared back, eyes half-asleep in his gazing. The D-Code simply nudged the man's head with his foot, Carlos just took the foot-nudging without complaint. He seemed completely out.

"Motherfucker has the gall to sleep after _that?_ " scoffed his squad mate.

With slight reluctance, Bryan took his eyes off him and rested on the trail of fluids that surrounded the pulsating pustule. Its outer flesh peeling and melted off, yet it was remarkably still alive despite how severe it had been burnt from fire and chemical.

"Open that thing up," he ordered.

* * *

 _Fort Detrick, Maryland, post Operation Ark._

When he thought about clinical psychopaths, the popular image always came to mind, someone like Dr. Mercer. Classic low-affect personality, disregard for others, self-obsessed narcist, low-empathy, sadistic and cruel.

People with criminal minds. Unstable with a history of misconducts.

Not someone like him. He toed the lines, but he was never serious enough to overstep them. He didn't give a shit about others and would be bored of their plights, but never took satisfaction with their pain. He was no product of poor environment, neither was he a child of bad parents, just poorly ill-equipped ones.

Twenty-six, returned from his deployment, accused of manslaughter, the Army made a proposal, either get his shit together and go visit the recommended specialists while they make their decisions, or get the boot and end his military career right there. So he took the former option, repeated visits to military psychologists and psychiatrists, being bored out of his fucking mind with their talks and their hours-long procedures with multiple doctors - brain scans, experiments, more questions before they could finally slap the ASPD diagnosis on his record.

So fucking what? Like slapping a label on it was going to make any difference in his life.

At first, he had given a scoffing laugh at his doctors and thought of them as crazy. He may not give a damn… but he wasn't one of those scumbags who goes off to hurt people. The thing about lacking emotional empathy is the incapability of connecting and sharing people's feeling, especially pain. It was an oxymoron to desire pain on another for that reason.

Sure, he could say he loved his grandmother especially, and he genuinely trusted her with his life. He could speak his thoughts with her, even ones he kept to himself without being judged. He could appreciate the value of his relationship with her and respect her for what she had done.

He was not an easy child and didn't play along. When his mind was set, he would not follow nor listen to anyone. If it was too boring, he would find a way to interrupt the class. In high school, he was known to just walk out in the middle of the lesson and straight out of school. Punishments didn't work on him, just made him resentful towards the source and rewards were purely superficial in his eyes.

He lacked an ego to feed with praises. No ego to bruise. No ego to shape into something acceptable in the typical dull mind of others. As a kid, he was impulsive, always up to no good and always managed to get other kids up to no good for his own amusements. Never needed anyone, never depended on anyone.

He always knew what he wanted and how to get it. A troublesome trait that put him firmly into the problem child category. In his view, people were the problem. If they couldn't deal with him, that was their fault, not his. No amount of guilt-tripping and emotionally-pulling was going to change that fact, though his mother had always gone out of her way to do just that and never fully understood him.

He learned quite quickly if he could make people smile and laugh, relax around him, they were prone to overlook some bit about himself. Still, even when he played nice, even when he fit himself in a hole, there would always be something unattainable between him and others. Sometimes, he couldn't be bothered and act without checks. It was a fast way to learn he was dealing with a mother who had a fragile ego, easily flew apart when shattered. It began the cycle of picking up those shards and putting it back bit by bit.

It was a source of annoyances throughout his life, an effort he had to constantly put in to make sure the gap between him and others didn't grow. All he knew it was simply the path of least hardship and stopped people getting all up in his case about something trivial.

When the doctors explained, gave their expertise on the truths, broke down the myths, it started to click. It started to make sense why he always felt different from others.

But it didn't change anything. He just wanted everything to be done and over with, his life back to the way it was.

When all things had simmered down, he still couldn't continue his military career with the Army. After months of questionings by his psychologist, he was given a proposition. He would be transferred into an entirely different division, lose all his rank, and prove his salt and his worth in training again. A new start.

 _You will be a BLACKWATCH personnel_.

The best of the best, if he proved himself he was the best in his conduct and not just in his scorings. So he worked hard, trained hard, forced himself to be straight and narrow.

Loyal, never question, and willing to go beyond.

Now look where those five years in a military cult got him.

He heard the crisp rustles of the black scans pulled out from their folder, placed onto the table in front of him neatly, side by side.

"This is your scan six years ago." The doctor's gloved finger tapped the image on the left, his voice muffled beneath a layer of rubber, plastic and filter.

A cross-section scan of his brain from the side.

"This is you now, Brad." He tapped the image on the right then circle the area around the center on his brain.

"Is this some test?" he said as the light shone on the black sheets, the squiggles and patterns he paid no mind, but the center and front of his brain told a different story. "You sure you didn't mix up your scans?" he asked the doctor.

"I assure you not. That's why we did another scan just to make sure," the doctor said. "Your brain is changing, Brad." He circled the front lobe of his brain of the right image. "And the connecting tissue to your amygdala has grown, it would explain your recent burst of extreme emotions, anxiety for one."

The amygdala, tiny peanut-size brain matter said to be the emotional center. Something so small can cause a large impact on his life. Apparently, he had a smaller amygdala and in a situation of fear, stress, and anger, that part of the brain hardly lights up. In extreme situations, his body was noted for lowering his pulse rate below his baseline.

The mind and body of a typical person were the opposite to his. That area of grey matter in the back and in the center of amygdala lights up like fireworks when given positive or negative feedbacks. Hearts and breathing tended to flux and react.

But his mind wasn't typical, and he was known to underreact when situations call for the opposite.

"You're sure it's not a fucking tumor you're staring at?" he said softly as he stared at the images.

His left showed the man he was, the one who was said to have _ice in his vein_. On his right, he was staring at his future. A different person. A different man. One prone to aggression, bouts of anger, fear, and anxieties. Not the calm man who had never experienced the latter two, who was quick to adapt to situations of all kind, and today shouldn't be like no other he had experienced.

He was staring at the brain of someone's else, and that someone was him.

"The growths we're looking at isn't abnormal like tumors."

"What part of this not abnormal to you, doctor?" Brad raised his eyes from the pictures and glared.

He was changing beyond his control, and all because of this virus in his body.

* * *

One day deployed in Manhattan, the next day through delirious fever, recalling the sudden feeling of being torn from his corner of darkness and into the flashlight glaring at his eyes, waking up to the sound of voices and wheels running outside his plastic tent as they brought him down a hallway. He should've played dead, since giving the team of scientist a fright earned him this solitary dungeon. Most of his hours in here was spent half-in and half-out a fever dream, waking moments he could barely recall besides the intense feeling of deep-seated panic, vaguely remembering the estrangement of watching through someone's else eyes… in his own body.

Panic… what a strange alien feeling, but one he had to adapt and learn quickly to deal with – mostly through pain, pain to ground him back to reality, biting the side of his cheeks hard enough until he could taste the iron tang of his blood on his tongue.

At least it was preferable than having his body be dumped on those barges and ready to be burn. Better alive than dead, as they say.

When he felt like himself, he didn't mind solitary, boredom may be his monkey brain stabbing himself with pain to make him do something, but it was a pain he could adjust to. It was something he preferred, rather than dealing those times when he couldn't bear the walls standing around him. Times when their presences felt overbearing, the silence aggravating, when he felt like he was about to fly apart.

A parasite in his brain. A parasite taking over his body. A parasite becoming him. No, that was not right. It was just his monkey brain doing what monkey do, flipping the fuck out at every tiny little thing about this empty room he was stuck with.

Could they cure it? He sat there in the corner of his room, his back against the walls and shoulder rested on the adjacent, his eyes staring at the camera.

This was a virus that changes the genetics of its host. Could they reverse the changes?

Or did he have to live with this animal he was going to become?

He hated this.

"Can I have a magazine at least?" he asked.

The black round lens of the camera just kept recording.

Fuck, he was bored. He sighed and pulled himself up to pace around.

He thought about it. He was stuck in this room. They weren't going to help him. He certainly doubted they could cure him. If a cure to this virus exist than Blackwatch didn't have to do their job. He was stuck here. He was going to be stuck here. He was stuck in this forever.

His breathing went up a notch and his eyes flick right and left, at the walls around him. From this moment forward, he was going to wake up to these walls, the same ceiling, the same tiny little dots of cement's grains on the walls every time he opens his eyes.

Since when thinking about his future bothered him so much? He was never the long-term planner.

"Brad," a familiar voice scratched out from the speaker. "Your escorts are coming over. Would you kindly take your place by the bed?"

Heh, not subject trojan-two or some barcode numbers?

Out of all the scientists, Dr. Koenig goes out of his way to treat him with respect. The good cop in a facility filled with bad cops. He wanted to laugh at that. Good cop and bad cop routine only worked if the interrogated could sympathize, trust, truly believe the good cop understood them, genuinely wanted to help them, and was stuck in a bad situation like them – and it took a very desperate or idiotic person to believe that. All three was impossible to achieve in a bad situation when trusts were fragile, and the victim quick to label all their captors as only _them_.

If they weren't short of time and valued accurate information, Blackwatch would go through the length to build trust with their subject. Kindness and security, he had learned in his briefing was a far more effective tool than torture and bad cop routines. It was simple, kindness encouraged trusts, cooperation, compliance without their subject realizing. People were social creatures, instincts to get along overpowers distrust, could fool your enemy as your friend, make a bad situation look good.

Even the Nazi found this method more effective. Torture was just a quick and dirty way to make the interrogated do and say everything Blackwatch want them to say, even false confessions. It was not the most trustworthy method in information gathering for that reason, but an effective method for forcing compliance.

If Koenig thought being nice would make a better method to train a lab mouse to scurry for his cheese, then he should try harder.

Brad simply ignored the speaker. At the very least, give him something, anything to occupy him from boredom.

What was stopping him anyway? He could break from his prison right here and now. He has the strength. But did he have the endurance, the speed to outran and bear through the wrath of Blackwatch trained to face far worse than him? He may be strong, Brad looked at his hands as he tightened them into fists, his eyes glancing at the metal bed frame he had twisted in curiosity, but that didn't mean he was immune to the bullets and hellfire.

Outside his typical hit and run tactics, ZEUS only survived for this long because how quick he healed himself from the victims he sucks dry. Almost every time they cornered him, every time they were so close to getting him, he would always slip their grasp, find some meals then comes back and hit just as hard as before. If he had no immediate way to recover from his injuries, he would have been dead like all the other tenacious infected simply from pure brute firepower.

He was fast, strong, could endure, heal and recover from anything – except a nuke, of course.

While he, he was no ZEUS.

He stared at his hand as he twisted and curled, opening and closing it in an examination. At least, he didn't think so. He didn't feel like there were weird squiggly black-red eels inside him. He wondered what the trade-off would be besides being treated less like a thing.

On cue, the door of his room slid open, Brad just simply gave a side-glance at his hulking visitor.

"Sergeant," he greeted at the D-Code waiting outside his doorway.

The black rectangular box device he usually wore was for once missing from his face, in place of it were surprisingly a pair of brown human eyes surrounded with exposed white skin. Redlight was something they didn't want to take a risk with even with their super amped-up soldier, hence even the D-Codes were equipped with full-cover headgear. Exposed skin meant one thing, Blackwatch believed the D-Codes won't be infected by what he has, either from their resilient immune system, or the virus wasn't contagious unless transmitted properly.

"You know the drill, Corporal," Bryan spoke, his voice as always muffled beneath the rubber and filter of his mask.

"If I don't, will you pull me out by the ankle?" He gave a quick fake smile when he walked right up to him.

"Don't joke on that," the D-Code replied, and he stepped back, the rifle team behind him loaded with their guns raised, ready to shoot.

He stepped out and walked ahead, knowing where they wanted him. "What's the agenda for today, sir?" he asked casually.

There was a hint of amusement when the D-Code answered, "Testing and maybe CQC training."

Shady human testing was hardly as hair-raising or horrifying movies made it out to be. The ones he had were repeated psyche assessments no different from his previous experiences with a psychologist and psychiatrist. In fact, it was just mundane. The only difference this time, pain tolerance tests were involved.

Brad slightly turned and looked back over his shoulder, "And if I prove myself?"

" _If_ you prove yourself," the D-Code repeated and shoved him forward.

Their footsteps echoed throughout the hallway as they walked under the timeless fluorescent lights lodged within the ceiling. Was it solitary, or had it always felt this jarringly empty even out here in the corridor? He neither felt nor heard any presence when he passed by the rows of doors, instead, he was led into an interrogation room, a plain empty room that lacked any visual stimulant besides two chairs, a solid steel table screwed to the floor, and as always, the observing two-way mirror that dominated one wall. Already the scientist was there waiting for him in his seat, recorder resting on pen and paper placed on the table.

Brad took his seat as the heavy door swung shut with a deep boom, Bryan took his place on the wall right beside it, his arms crossed over his chest.

"How do you feel, Brad?" said the calm cheery elderly voice from that yellow hazmat suit.

"Fine, I guess." He shrugged, noticing the recorder wasn't running.

"Even after this, after how we had treated you?"

"I expected less."

"You expected less?" Dr. Koenig laughed softly. "You're not our enemy Brad, the things we did were precaution we had to take."

"Precaution to what?" His voice was wry when he asked.

"We thought it would be a chance to study the progression of how Walkers are formed," the scientist confessed quite honestly. "Instead, to our surprise, we got you."

"Is that good or bad?" He was being rhetorical when he asked that.

"Good surprise," the scientist said. "Have you ever heard of Hope, Idaho?"

That was a familiar question, one his captain had asked him a long time ago. It was, Brad had come to realize, a test of loyalty.

He answered as he had before, "Yeah, everyone here knows or at least heard about it."

"What do you know about it, Mister Kirk?"

Brad gave an odd look before he glanced at the D-Code. Bryan's neutral gaze said nothing.

"It was a super-soldier program. First, they tested on monkeys. Then, they tested on a bunch of townspeople," he said and scratched the side of his neck. "I think it was… a military town filled with military families with a long history and tradition of services, I guess that's why they were willing to sign up for the experiment. The goal was to train the next generation as special soldiers. After all, kids from military family are more likely to join the military, especially when those kids grew up in a pro-military communal environment," Brad noted. "Then, it all went wrong. Sabotaged or something, it's why we do what we must," he said.

"You believed that?" Dr. Koenig asked.

"It's what my captain told us," Brad shrugged. "I'm less inclined to believe the wilder versions since it did a real fucking poor job at making dead people." He sniffed.

Koenig was quiet, the black visor of the hazmat suit still when he asked, "What's your perspective on Gentek?"

"A heap of screw-ups that we had to clean up after. Everything wouldn't happen if it weren't for that good-for-nothing company," Brad scoffed. "They were hired by the brass for research, but instead those assholes created an even worse virus."

"And they got what was coming?"

"They withheld information, they disobeyed the brass, and one of their own unleashed _her_ into the city," Brad said. "If she had stayed in our custody, maybe none of this wouldn't happen. But instead, those idiots managed to move her into the city," he was frowning, clearly incredulous at Gentek's decisions. "Of course, they got everything they deserved, doc. They played with fire."

"What of our late General Randall?" Dr. Koenig asked.

"What about him, doc?"

"You said that Gentek managed to move the first Runner into the city, but have you ever wondered they would need the approval of said higher-ups to do so?"

"Like the General himself?" Brad stared at the hazmat suit. "If that was the case, then his mistake would have been not shooting them in the head sooner."

Dr. Koenig chuckled at that. "Your captain must be glad to have a man like you working with him."

"Glad is an overstatement when it comes to a Blackwatch officer like him."

He heard a mirthful exhale from that. "Tell me, Brad, would you still work for your captain even after all your experiences here?"

"If the alternative is solitary and staying as a lab rat forever, then yeah." Brad looked up. "I'd rather be out there fighting than in here."

"Are you sure you want this?" Koenig's voice was serious. "You would not be treated as an equal to your fellow soldiers. Your rights to your citizen life will be forfeited."

"It was already forfeited. You said it yourself, doc. I'm infected."

 _And that was death sentence._

"The fact I'm alive means I can still be of use," Brad muttered as he glanced at the D-Code standing by the door.

Bryan's brown eyes remained in their steely composure.

"Then we just have to prove them you still are." Koenig pushed the paper and pen into his hand. "Sign here and we'll get started."

He didn't need to squint at the black visor to know Koenig was grinning in his helmet. Brad looked down at the three pages of the contract. He skimmed through the lines, pausing on some interesting ones before flipping to the next page. On each bottom right corner, he signed with the last he finished with a flick on the mandatory signature spot.

With a congratulation and a handshake, Doctor Koenig send him off. The fireteam that escorted him gone when he stepped outside with Bryan.

"So," Brad began at the giant super soldier. Partly from genuine curiosity, and against whatever self-taught good judgment he had, he asked, "Did they ever made you sign 'no sex for life' in your contract?"

Bryan actually narrowed his eyes on him. "Corporal, you do realize you have CQC training with me after, right?"

 _Ah, shit_.

* * *

AN: The problem with starting a new fic is that you're trying to get the characters voices right, the pacing right, and trying not to be impatient to get to the big plot points you always want to write and hope you don't get burnout by the time.


End file.
